Nico Hulkenberg, Renault, Circuit de Catalunya, 2019

Ricciardo: Renault should have considered team orders

2019 Spanish Grand Prix

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Daniel Ricciardo believes he might have scored a better result in the Spanish Grand Prix if Renault had told his team mate to let him past at the restart.

When the Safety Car period ended Ricciardo, who had just pitted for fresh tyres, was behind Nico Hulkenberg, who was on 10-lap-older rubber. Ricciardo said he had a better chance of tackling the cars ahead and the team should have considered giving him priority.

“I think where we missed out was the restart,” said Ricciardo. “We lost again track position pitting and then we fell behind Nico. He was on a used tyre, I was on a new.

“We had a chance that first lap honestly to attack the guys in front but we were told we were able to fight. I couldn’t really see him advancing with that tyre as much as I could with min.

“So again we’ll see now, sort it out if again, strategically, we could’ve maximised one car over the other.”

Ricciardo admitted he was disappointed to have finished outside the points. Earlier in the race he passed Carlos Sainz Jnr, who went on to finish ahead of him in the top 10.

“I’m frustrated to see Carlos in eighth,” said Ricciardo. “We had him at the end of the first stint and then we fitted a hard, he fitted a medium and he passed us that out-lap. And then obviously look at where he finished and where we did.

“I think we had his pace today. To be honest we under-achieved the result the car was capable of.

“It’s just little things. With this midifeld it’s so tight. With a small maybe lack of perfection we miss potentially four points. We’ve got to try and do better, try and figure out what we can executive and understand why we fitted the hard instead of the hard instead of the medium and if that was us being too cautious then let’s not be cautious.”

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2019 F1 season

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18 comments on “Ricciardo: Renault should have considered team orders”

  1. Yeah, with Ferrari taking the big league fail-title, that has taken some of the attention away from Renault, but looking at it, they get the F1.5 fail title for quite similar reasons: not enough on all fronts.

    1. True. Given that Renault is the only manufacturer or factory outfit in the midfield, there’s no excuse for them to not be leading this group.

      When it comes to failures this season there are 3 standout cases ->
      1) Ferrari for consistently failing to beat the only other team that is permitted to win under the current regulations. Looks like they’re going to make it 6 defeats in 6 seasons of the hybrid era.
      2) Renault for being the only factory outfit in the midfield. Even in the midfield they look mediocre more often than not.
      3) Williams…. well.. what can we really say about them.

    2. why is everyone saying that Ferrari are such big failures? They simply dont have the fastest car, not sure they were even at RedBull level this race. They had some strategic errors during these 5 races, but nowhere near as big as people make it sound like. And the fact that Toto and Lewis always made them look favourites I believe made Ferrari seem like they should have achieved more, when in fact they kind of finished where they belong.

      1. Luke S (@joeypropane)
        13th May 2019, 7:42

        Because they have the biggest budget, the most influence on the technical and sporting regulations, the most experience in the sport and 2 very good drivers – it should be a perfect recipe for, at the very least, challenging Mercedes for the championship… instead they are 90 points behind after 5 races.

      2. Matteo (@m-bagattini)
        13th May 2019, 9:13

        @gechichan @joeypropane it seems that Lewis’ and Toto’s game of playing the eternal underdogs despite 5 one-twos are working, people are falling for that. They took the attention out of the fact that:

        1) with the current regulation it’s incredibly hard to catch up. Years back, you could use a large budget to test your car on your own track (that made a lot in the Schumacher era), nowadays the large budget helps, of course, but you can’t “buy” wins. You can’t catch up because everyone is developing and you would need a breakthrough to out-develop others (this is what Ferrari tried, failing).

        2) Mercedes has a very stable condition, while Ferrari changed a lot of things since last summer. It adds stability to find to problems to fix

        3) Ferrari is in a completely new territory with 2 top drivers. It was appreciated when announced but it takes time to adapt. Bottas and Hamilton are capitalizing on work Toto and the team have done when Rosberg was in the team.

        4) They were equally good during winter testing, especially with the “spec 2” car, but did a great job selling the fact that Ferrari was the car to beat.

        5) There are other teams on the grid. People is getting tired of seeing Mercedes dominate and want competition; they are angry at Ferrari just because they are tired of seeing the same car year after year after year winning. They’re not asking themselves why is this happening: are there 9 teams full of idiots out there? Or is it that rules locked us in a miserable situation following the reliability road?

        Maybe it is time to admit that pushing year after year for reliability took us to the road of predictability. Engines and parts were made to last a lot less, leading to failures. Now engines are engineered to last 7 races: they never brake. And the same goes for a lot of other components, when they’re not standardized. Everything is required to be perfect, and now we’re reaching the point where everything IS perfect, especially at Mercedes.

    3. @bosyber – a very apt comparison, Renault are the Ferrari of the midfield.

    4. Pretty much nailed it @bosyber

      They’ve skated along like this for quite a while. First because Honda’s PU got the focus and no one really noticed that theirs was just as unreliable (and slow).

      However I think this year the board might start losing patience with their management (well Cyril) if they don’t start showing some promise. Never a good thing to bring poor performance and brand embarrassment to a board if you want to retain a presence in F1

  2. Any team who does not use team orders is a stupid team. This is a powerful tool when used correctly. What is the point of having your cars race each other just for someone else to pick up the pieces. I think Mercedes are the kings of team orders, but they are very sneaky about it. If you think about it, the Mercedes keep nice gaps to each other, while the Ferrari race each other like demented little children with no thought of the consequences. How does Mercedes keep these gaps to the other car? Of course that are told, team order, to do so. So please for the love of anything you like, please give the team order stigma a rest and let the teams use this tool. Hopefully one day the mega-goliath Mercedes can be defeated.

    1. A team simply can adjust gaps by giving instructions about engine settings to save fuel or the engine and managing gaps this way. You should analyse the pit communication to see what happens.

    2. @aliced A team that does not use orders unless it sinecerly believes a specific team order will improve its situation is a sensible team.

      I am not sure Renault can consider this situation as qualifying in this regard. I don’t like most team orders, they are sometimes outright counterproductive, but sometimes they have their uses.

    3. Michael Ward
      13th May 2019, 16:36

      I agree with you completely.
      In the cases of both Renault and Ferrari over the last few races we’ve seen how clumsy these teams can be with team orders and how much time it loses them when they do it badly.
      We’ve also heard that Ferrari wanted LeClerc to wait behind Vettel in Bahrain, as he said, if he waited he’d have burned up his tyres and would have never got past, in the moment is everything.
      LeClerc nearly won that race, Vettel was nowhere near as quick.
      The team should react as soon as possible to the scenario at all times, you never know when having a car a few second further down the road could pay dividends.
      Safety cars, time penalties, reliability problems, seconds on track can make all the difference without warning.
      If the follower is faster, let them past.
      If the follower is on a different strategy and that’s what makes them faster, let them past.
      If it’s because of safety car and alternate tyres, let them past.
      To do anything different is wasting time and given how much money these teams spend for fractions of a second, wasting time on track for a drivers ego is ridiculous and disrespectful to the rest of the team.

  3. 10 laps fresher tyres didn’t make it possible for DR to overtake NH at the restart. Why does he think he’d have more chance against the Torro Rosso’s and Sainz on fresh tyres?

    1. He did within a couple of laps which for that track in itself is pretty good.

      Had he not had to do that he may have been able to close down another teams car instead of his own.

  4. I just don’t understand why they didn’t pit Hulk under the SC as well, didn’t make much sense

    1. dorisrcharlie
      13th May 2019, 17:09

      Bc that would’ve meant he’d lose places to PER and RAI. The HUL-stay out-call was right.
      @johnmilk

      1. Debatable. Fresh tyres at least would give him more pace. There was nothing left to lose

  5. Renault and Ferrari, by far the biggest disappointments of the season thus far the pre-season expectations considered.

  6. I just couldn’t understand why they got him with hard tyres. Unless they were planning a one-stopper.

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